Genetics Allele Interactions Flashcards
What is a mutation?
It is a stable, inherited change in coding of an allele.
What is the wild type phenotype?
It is the non-mutated, common version of an allele.
What is a locus?
This is the point at which an allele sits on a chromosome, both the wild type and the mutated versions.
What is a polymorphic locus?
It is a locus point where there is more than one version of an allele present, typically mutated alleles account for more than the usual 1% of a locus.
What is incomplete dominance?
When one allele is not more dominant than another one. This leads to heterozygous offspring that have phenotypes that are a mix between the parents. (Think Violet Eggplant)
What is co-dominance?
The situation here is that two alleles produce two different phenotypes in heterozygotes and typically both alleles are expressed because neither allele is dominant nor recessive.
What is a pleiotropic allele?
A single allele that influences more than 1 phenotype.
What is epistasis?
When the phenotype of one gene is affected by another gene.
What is inbreeding? What are the two outcomes of inbreeding and what do they do?
Inbreeding is close selective breeding that ends as either depression (An increase of recessive traits due to extreme genetic genetic similarity, leading to decreased quality in offspring) or as heterosis (hybrid vigor or a better breed of X because of successful inbreeding).
How does the environment change how the phenotype is expressed?
Depending on conditions, the penetrance (how common the gene is expressed in a population) of a gene and expressivity (the degree to which the genotype is expressed) show how the environment has pressured things like warmer fur to grow in the winter and shed in the summer.
What are complex phenotypes and what are these genes called in general?
Complex phenotypes are generally quantitative genes, with a ton of variation and continuity. Qualitative genes, in contrast, are simple and hold very few phenotypic properties. The genes that control complex characters such as adult height are called quantitative trait loci.
